Dedicated to the acceptance, medical treatment, & legal protection of individuals in the process of correcting the misalignment of their anatomical sex, & supporting their transition into society.
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Springfield, VA, USA. Thought experiments are devices of the imagination used to investigate the nature of things.
We need only list a few of the well-known thought experiments to be reminded of their enormous influence and importance in the sciences: Newton's bucket, Maxwell's demon, Einstein's elevator, Heisenberg's gamma-ray microscope, Schrödinger's cat. So let's think about Transgenders, shall we?
A thought experiment:
Two transgenders, a female with a penis and a male with breasts and vagina, arrive dressed gender appropriately at a nudist camp. After checking into their room, they take off their gender appropriate clothes and go to happy hour out around the swimming pool. All the other guests are out there, men and women, male and female, drinking mojitos, and chatting each other up. Perhaps liaisons are being arranged.
Question:
Without their gender appropriate clothes, what is the sex and gender of the female with a penis and the male with breasts and vagina? Is the female with a penis still a woman and the male with breasts and vagina still a man?
Areas requiring further research:
How do the other nude guests perceive the sex and gender of the female with a penis and the male with breasts and vagina?
Which reality is an accurate description of the physical world: The perception of the other unclothed guests at the nudist camp or the conceptualization of the naked female with a penis and naked male with breasts and vagina?
I'm serious.
Really.
You just are going to have to try and give this thought experiment thing a chance. I mean it's not like anyone would try to do this in real life, would they?
A little background. A thought experiment is the use of a hypothetical scenario to help us explore and understand the way things actually are. Below is a famous example (You can skip this part if you want and come back in a couple paragraphs down.)
Schrödinger wrote [2]:
One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of the hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic aid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.
It is typical of these cases that an indeterminacy originally restricted to the atomic domain becomes transformed into macroscopic indeterminacy, which can then be resolved by direct observation. That prevents us from so naively accepting as valid a "blurred model" for representing reality. In itself it would not embody anything unclear or contradictory. There is a difference between a shaky or out-of-focus photograph and a snapshot of clouds and fog banks.
-- Usually stated as
The cat is in the locked box. Is the cat dead or alive before you open the box and learn its status?
Now back to our naked transgenders.
Two transgenders, a female with a penis and a male with breasts and vagina, arrive in gender appropriate dress at a nudist camp.
Gender theory asserts that gender is a social construct (clothes, social roles, etc.), that, if left alone, men and women would exhibit no significant gender differences. The transgender movement extends the gender assertion to include physical sex: females can have a penis, males can have breasts and a vagina. Except for some incidentals that don't amount for much, the transgender movement asserts that sex is also a social construct. You are what you say you are no matter how you prefer your genitals to be.
Thus we have the two transgenders: one a female with a penis, the other a male with breasts and vagina, dressed appropriately for those socially constructed sexes and genders.
After checking into their room, they take off their gender appropriate clothes and go to happy hour out around the swimming pool.
The two transgenders have arrived at a nudist camp, requiring that they be naked, stripped of their cultural costumes and clothing.
All the other guests are out there, men and women, male and female, drinking mojitos and chatting each other up.
At the happy hour, the other guests, who are not transgendered, sans gender theory social constructs, are naked around the pool. Merriment and alcohol are pursued by all.
We continue.
Without their gender appropriate clothes, what is the sex and gender of the female with a penis and the male with breasts and vagina?
A key concern of human existence (following close after food, shelter, and survival) is sex. Sometimes sex seems to our number one concern.
The absolute first thing we notice and catalog when we meet a person for the first time is their sex, subconsciously if not consciously. The sex of a stranger is a key to species survival: males are physically more dangerous and may be a threat to the group; females are significantly less physically dangerous and provide opportunities to reproduce and continue the species.
Sex is important so we look.
Is the female with a penis still a woman and the male with breasts and vagina still a man?
The transgender movement says yes. Sex is a social construct. The female with a penis is still a woman because she says she is. The male with breasts and vagina, and perhaps a period, is still a man because he says he is. To the transgender community, actual genitalia is immaterial except as has been noted elsewhere "the one thing most transgendered people seem to do is insist on talking about their genitals. [3]"
However, most of the human race believes not only that genitalia exist for a reason but that penises and vaginas make a difference in our life experiences and how we approach the world.
Which leads to further questions.
How do the other nude guests perceive the sex and gender of the female with a penis and the male with breasts and vagina?
My limited experience (a handful of decades) suggests that when a human male sees another person with breasts and vagina, he perceives a female human. Likewise, when a human female sees a person with a penis, especially if it is erect, she perceives a male human. Little ambiguity would seem to exist in their perception.
Perhaps transgenders see the world differently, but if they do, they need to present a rational scientific explanation why physical biology is unrelated to their sex construct — why the perception of the other nude guests is wrong. The transgender movement must present their argument coherently supported by the appropriate neurobiological research.
Sociological explanations and papers are insufficient to explain the impact of physical genitalia on human existence. Just to say there is no impact is not nearly enough. Where is the beef, the hard scientific evidence that supports the transgender assertion?
Which reality is an accurate description of the physical world: The perception of the other unclothed guests at the nudist camp or the conceptualization of the naked female with a penis and naked male with breasts and vagina?
Without a rational scientific basis and evidence to support the transgender explanation that the neurobiological binary sex construct perceived by most adult humans is wrong, the explanation with the fewest possible assumptions must be taken as correct (or at least as a closer approximation of reality). The perception of the other unclothed guests are correct and the transgender assertion must be viewed as fallacious:
The naked transgender with a penis is male;
The naked transgender with breasts and a vagina is female.
Clothes do not make one male or female, a woman or a man.
Neither does political polemics.
The sex binary exists, fully supported by both the neurobiology of the human animal and ongoing scientific and medical research
— despite the best efforts of the transgender community to the contrary.
1. Thought Experiments. James Robert Brown. In: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford Univerity. 2007.
2. E. Schrödinger, Die gegenwärtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik, Naturwissenschaften 23: pp.807-812; 823-828; 844-849 (1935).
The Present Situation In Quantum Mechanics: A Translation Of "Cat Pardix Paper". Erwin Schrödinger; Translator: John D. Trimmer. This translation was originally published in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 124, 323-38.
Appeared as Section I.11 of Part I of Quantum Theory and Measurement. J.A. Wheeler and W.H. Zurek, eds. Princeton university Press. New Jersey 1983. [ Full Text (PDF) ]
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One can even set up quite ridiculous cases. A cat is penned up in a steel chamber, along with the following device (which must be secured against direct interference by the cat): in a Geiger counter there is a tiny bit of radioactive substance, so small, that perhaps in the course of the hour one of the atoms decays, but also, with equal probability, perhaps none; if it happens, the counter tube discharges and through a relay releases a hammer which shatters a small flask of hydrocyanic aid. If one has left this entire system to itself for an hour, one would say that the cat still lives if meanwhile no atom has decayed. The psi-function of the entire system would express this by having in it the living and dead cat (pardon the expression) mixed or smeared out in equal parts.
Ms. Lisa Jain Thompson
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